Mirantis is on a roll.
The Mountain View, California-based OpenStack vendor reported closing a
record-breaking (for open source software) Series B funding round in December
2014 of $100 million. Now the company claims to be the number one learning
resource for delivering OpenStack training in the world, with more than 5,000
graduates to date taught at more than 70 locations around the world. I recently
spoke with Lee Xie, Head of OpenStack Training Services, Mirantis, about what
factors contributed to their success in educating so many professionals on this
popular private cloud platform.
VMblog: Lots of people offer
OpenStack training, why should someone choose Mirantis?
Lee Xie: I've personally taken many of the OpenStack courses out there
and came to the conclusion that there are three big reasons why students prefer
a OpenStack learning experience from Mirantis.
The first is that our course is based on 100% pure OpenStack
and free of vendor-specific content. By comparison, in other courses like Red
Hat's CL210, they teach commands in their labs that won't work outside their
Redhat OpenStack Distro. Students study commands and educating themselves on
OpenStack skills that they can't take and use on other platforms.
The second is that our course lives up to the name: "bootcamp",
the schedule is very tight and strenuous and students often claim that it's
much harder than a normal 9-6 workday. We understand that there's a large
opportunity cost to spending three to four days on training, so we design our
courses to be rigorous, challenging, and to get students from new to expert in
a relatively short amount of time.
Finally, our instructors are not puppets! You think I'm joking
or poking fun, but many of the courses out there are done by instructors that
don't know OpenStack. They may know about how to lead a training, but they
follow a precise script and can't answer the deeper questions. This is a common
result of outsourcing training - the instructors are training OpenStack today
and Microsoft Visual Basic next week. At Mirantis, all our instructors are
OpenStack Experts first and trainers second. They all have a strong engineering
background and are specialized in OpenStack, and they don't teach classes on
any other topics.
So I'm biased, but we
think it's the best training out there, of course! We've been doing these
courses and adding to them since 2011. And we make it easy to take our
courses. Today we have more than 70
training locations on six continents (sorry, Antarctica will remain under
served for now). So we have the most experience in OpenStack training and we
have been delivering those courses longer than anyone else. Nearly 90% of our
graduating students tell us we're the best training in OpenStack they've ever
had.
VMblog: Can you tell us what's new in
your recent announcement on training?
Xie: To better connect the OpenStack
community, Mirantis Certified professionals will now be listed in Mirantis' new Certificate Verification portal. The portal
lets potential employers search for Mirantis-Certified professionals and verify
their credentials with their certification number. The certifications -- basic
or advanced -- are based on passing a proctored online test for basic and
hands-on competence demonstration with an instructor for advanced. You don't
have to take a Mirantis course to take a certification exam.
We've also expanded our course offerings. In addition to our
most popular course, OpenStack Bootcamp I (OS100), Mirantis now
offers OpenStack
Fundamentals (OS50), a one-day course for
business professionals (the only publicly-available course of its kind
on the market), and OpenStack
Bootcamp II (OS200), a training for students with an extensive
background in OpenStack.
VMblog: So much of training
is about the quality of the teaching. How do you scale your education services
and also maintain high standards with your faculty?
Xie: All of our instructors have a variety of real-world technical
experience, including devops, system administrator, engineering work, and more
(you can check out some of our instructors online here:
http://training.mirantis.com/meet-our-instructors). Our teachers are
subject-matter experts and bring with them experience in many fields, even
outside of OpenStack. Our instructors develop the OpenStack training curriculum
with a combination of theory and practice. Almost two-thirds of instruction in
our courses is actually hands-on. Students stand up real OpenStack clouds. In
fact, a December 2014 TechValidate survey of our recent graduates showed that
more than 30% took what they learned in class back to work and built a new
OpenStack cloud for their employer. That's great ROI for any organization.
VMblog: Who should attend OpenStack Bootcamp I by
Mirantis?
Xie: OpenStack
Bootcamp I (OS100) is designed for cloud administrators, Linux system
administrators, and any IT professionals responsible for managing, maintaining
or supporting cloud operations.
VMblog: And what are the
prerequisites for taking OpenStack
Bootcamp I by Mirantis?
Xie: Before taking OpenStack Bootcamp I, you should have a basic understanding of
the Linux command line, virtualization concepts and networking concepts. If
you're not sure whether you're ready, check out these free
video training sessions, which introduce some of the core concepts
underlying OpenStack.
VMblog: So tell me, what can I expect to
learn from Mirantis training?
Xie: Of course, at the end of the day, it's all about the knowledge
and skills you take home with you. At the end of the class, you'll have a
comprehensive understanding of all the steps necessary to operate an OpenStack
cluster. From configuration through architecture, best practice and component
interaction, you'll go back to work (or your job search) prepared for the
real-world challenges faced by OpenStack administrators.
More information on Mirantis training is available online:
● Training website FAQ
page
● Online OpenStack training resources
● OpenStack Certification Study Guide
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Once again, a special thank you to Lee Xie, head of OpenStack Training Services at Mirantis, for taking time out to speak with VMblog.com.